Dance of Dragons
by sf
Summary: Postgame AU Turkcentric fic. Shinra has fallen, and the Turks are scattered. One of them, unable to let go of the past, returns four years later to Midgar.
1. I: Treasure in the Dark

**Dance of Dragons  
**by Elvaron (sf)

Alternative Universe Turk-centric fic, post-game.  
Shinra has fallen, and the Turks are scattered. One of them, unable to let go of the past, returns four years later to Midgar.

Rating: PG- Warnings: None  
Pairings: To be announced

**I: Treasure in the dark**

She moved as one with the darkness, gliding through the shadows.

It was always dark here, now, in the aftermath of the twin calamities: Diamond Weapon and Meteor. Once, the eerie green glow of the mako reactors would have cast sickly looking shadows against the walls after lights out, the lifeblood of the city that never slept. But those reactors were silent too, hulking blackened shapes against the night sky.

She adjusted the close fitting black hat, ensuring that not a strand of hair escaped its close confines. In the blackness, the blonde sheen would be a liability, were it not hidden from sight. She could not afford to be seen. Not here, not now.

_  
There is treasure in the Shinra building…_

She smirked dryly to herself. She didn't know who had started that ridiculous rumor, but it had certainly attracted treasure hunters and the desperate and destitute in vast quantities. _And the dumb_, she couldn't help but think – surely it was common sense that the Shinra Company would have dealt in electronic funds, storing all the gil in the bank instead of stashes throughout Headquarters. Nevertheless, the people kept on coming.

And kept on dying.

It was a fatal attraction, this rumor; Shinra might have fallen, but the deadly security systems lived on. And they did not take kindly to intruders.

But some people were skilled fighters, and they destroyed a few guard robots, disabled a few traps and unlocked a few doors before they were taken down, paving the way for the next generation, and leaving a thin trail of hope behind them. No one had found anything, but everyone was thoroughly convinced that they would be the next one to unlock the mythical safe and walk away a millionaire.

_Only to die at the hand of the mob, most likely_.

Something moved in the gloom ahead. She tensed, drawing on the sense materia nestled in her armlet, only to relax again. The object neared, crunching debris under foot. Laser beams pierced the darkness, flashing quickly over her, then the security robot chirped a "Good evening ma'am" as it trundled past.

She nodded out of sheer reflex, then frowned at it for the noise. It was perhaps fortunate that her target was nowhere near here, for _that_ would have been an excellent way to blow her cover. And while _she_ had no problems with the security systems, she also could not afford to be seen.

_  
There are ghosts in the Shinra building…_

She suppressed a shudder at that particular thought. Another fancy rumor that had originated on the streets. Some lucky treasure hunter had gotten away, it was said, and had seen someone moving on the top floors of the Shinra building, on the levels where the access codes had not yet been cracked, much further in than anyone had been able to reach.

It was easy to believe the common folk when they said that it was a ghost, or several. It was easy to believe that this building was haunted, with blood splashed on the walls or pooled in dark puddles on the ground. Some of it from unfortunate intruders who had been gunned down. Some of it from the injured and dying who had not been able to flee after Weapon's blast.

She was past the point where the last of the most aspiring treasure hunters had fallen, and the blood was solely from the latter group. The cleaning robots had long since disposed of the bodies, but the bloodstains remained. With the cleaning bots having run out of power, the corridors had assumed a dusty, deserted air, with old printouts gathering along the sides. It was definitely creepy. It was definitely easy to believe that it was haunted.

But she rather hoped that the subjects of that particular rumor weren't the deceased members of the executive board gathering for tea to reminiscence over the good ol' days. As nice as it would be to see Rufus again, the rest of the board had creeped her out even before they'd been relegated to the Lifestream. Not having to see them ever again had surely been her reward for surviving Shinra's downfall.

More than that, she hoped against hoped that it was a real person. Because only a fellow Shinra employee would have been able to make it past the security systems without a hitch, getting into the keycard locked areas.

Perhaps it would even be Reno or Rude. Oh, how she hoped it would be.

But if it wasn't… if it was some ambitious ex-employee trying to make off with classified data and corporate secrets… then she was duty bound to eliminate him.

Reno would have shaken his head and called her a rookie who was way too enthusiastic for her own good. The Company was long gone, and the world had moved on, leaving Midgar a burnt out wreck and a reminder of the folly of the past. She shouldn't have cared less about company secrets falling into someone else's hands – after all, the competition had won, and won completely, hadn't they?

But there were things on the upper floors of Shinra that she firmly believed should never see the light of day again. She hadn't been to Hojo's lab all that often, but she _had_ seen the Jenova specimen, and she had heard the dark rumors, and after Sephiroth's descent into madness, no one was going to deny that that creature was _evil_.

It had been four years since Sephiroth's fall, since Meteor. Four years since Cloud and his Avalanche friends had returned, battered but triumphant, and the world had hailed them as conquering heroes. Four years since Shinra had bitten the dust, and since all of them had been exiled into anonymity.

Meteor had split them up, the three of them that remained. In the subsequent confusion, they'd been torn apart, separated by the fleeing crowds stampeding out of the city even as Rude insisted on returning to HQ. The burning hatred of Shinra that the world had developed sealed her into isolation, running from city to town to city in search of sanctuary, trying to leave her former identity behind. She didn't know what had become of Reno or Rude. She hoped, in her heart of hearts, that her _senpai-tachi_ were still alive – it would take far more than that to kill them. She couldn't imagine Reno being taken down by Meteor. He was a _cockroach_, capable of surviving anything, including getting diced up by Cloud Strife. Several times. And Rude was so stoic and steady as to seem immortal.

But if any of them had _truly _seemed immortal, it had been Tseng. Only he hadn't been.

The pain that that particular thought usually elicited had faded over the years, leaving behind instead a grey wistfulness, a longing that seemed to fall on her shoulders like quiet autumn rain, causing a melancholic ache to bloom in her heart.

She smiled -- a small, sad smile -- and gently pushed the thought aside.

Her road had brought her to Kalm for a while, where she had taken up a job as a sales assistant. For a little while, she had honestly thought that she could rebuild her life and live again in this new world. Yet for all that she had tried her best to fit into this new life, there had been little joy, and less laughter, only a restlessness that stirred in her whenever she contemplated the road out of town.

_What are you doing with your life?_ that restlessness had asked, on quiet nights.

And she would recall drinks with the others, or recoil of the gun in her hands as they hunted down Shinra's enemies, or Reno's cocky smile. Rude's silent smirk. Tseng. _Tseng._

And one night, she had set off down that road and never looked back.

Her feet brought her back to Midgar, the city of ghosts and shadows. Haunted by those who refused to leave. Once, no one would stay under the plate because they wanted to. Now… the only ones who stayed in what remained of the slums were the ones who didn't want to go.

This was where she had been happy, she had recalled, staring up at the twisted wreckage of the Shinra HQ. This was where her life had taken on a focus and a meaning, where her hopes and dreams had taken shape and form. She had joined the Turks for a reason, had been so honestly _glad_ to be part of that motley crew… and all of that had been snatched away from her in the blink of an eye. Before she could even settle into her new family. Before she'd even had a chance to call them home. And now she didn't know where she wanted to go any more.

But ghosting silently through the corridors, concentration glued on her sense materia… it recalled bygone rounds of covert-ops training... and made her feel more alive than she had in ages.

**To be continued**

-v-


	2. II: Mist and Shadow

**Dance of Dragons  
**by Elvaron (sf)

Alternative Universe Turk-centric fic, post-game.  
Shinra has fallen, and the Turks are scattered. One of them, unable to let go of the past, returns four years later to Midgar.

Rating: PG- Warnings: None  
Pairings: To be announced

**II: Mist and shadow**

The building was unstable. Weapon had desecrated the upper floors, and while Meteor hadn't actually _hit_ it per se, the force of the blast had been enough to rip out whole sections from the side. Elena was acutely aware of this fact as she stepped through a door and found herself in the corridor with one entire side blown away, the supports creaking ominously as the wind howled past.

It was terrifying. There was a sheer sixty something storey drop to the ground, and the winds here were strong enough to pick you up and whip you out if you didn't watch it.

Dimly, she recalled all those rumors of President Shinra tossing unfortunate employees and competitors out from the 70th floor. ("_The old fat Shinra, you know. Not Junior. Junior's too damn skinny to throw _anyone _out of the window_." "_He fires a shotgun with one hand." "Too prissy, then."_) Personally, she'd always thought that that was an exaggeration – one couldn't even open the windows in that office… but there was always the helipad, right?

She told herself firmly that those were not screams she was hearing on the wind.

And Rufus… Rufus would have gotten them to _walk off the helipad themselves._

She pressed herself flat against the wall as she inched forward, shivering slightly in the sudden cold. The sense materia was still tracking her target, who was moving swiftly through the floor ahead. Why he had gotten off the stairs on this particular floor and decided to hunt around was beyond her. Was it the 68th floor? She wasn't quite sure; it was often hard to tell with the building folded in on itself, and whole floors inaccessible except holes drilled by other treasure hunters from higher floors.

A sparkle in the distance caught her eye, and she glanced down for a second. Midgar sprawled out under her, and from this height in the darkness you shouldn't see the destruction, the wreckage. It was just dim and peaceful, with small islands of light shimmering beneath it. Not exactly awe inspiring, but—

_Home._ _The place she'd exchanged for the ice-bound fields of the Icicle region. The city whose streets she had spent countless hours patrolling. The city whose many nooks and crannies she had become so familiar with, darting through the darkness, Tseng a dark blur in front, or Reno with his hair burning like a candle flame, or Rude, the glint of light off sunglasses as he turned back to see if she was keeping up. _

She swallowed hard and made for the door again, glancing down to check the sense materia.

And cursed herself for getting distracted. Her target had turned back, and was making its way straight towards her.

It was hard to move through an unknown area in the darkness with any kind of speed whatsoever, but that was the very thing that Turks were trained to do. There wasn't any conscious thought between registering the change in the situation before she was through the doorway, ducking down behind the desks beyond, the gun's safety flicked off and trained on the haphazard path between desks and filing cabinets that the target was coming down.

Whoever it was, he was moving quickly.

_I knew it._

This was the data center of the 68th floor, presumably where the science department stored its files. Someone was trying to dig up Shinra secrets. She was going to have to take him down.

She could see him – or maybe _her_, with long hair down to the waist caught in a loose pony tail at the nape of her neck – now. Moonlight illuminated the silhouette of someone moving confidently but silently down towards her, sidestepping the upturned tables and chairs with careless grace.

The target paused even before she could move, some instinct causing him or her to look up. Elena wasted no time on the curse that flicked briefly across her brain. Instincts kicked in, and she was over the desk in one bound, hand locked around the wrist of the other's gun hand, and her own gun shoved up against the target's skull.

"One move and—"

_Spice._ _That lingering hint of a foreign scent, although he only ever wore Midgar cologne and rarely at that—_

"Elena?"

_Couldn't be._ _Raven black strands right up against her face, stirring with every breath she took. That familiar broad-shouldered form – oh how could she have not recognized it, when she had spent so long standing behind him admiring that same profile – that _voice_, and it _hurt_, hurt far more than she could ever have expected…_

Her fingers were still locked around her gun and his wrist, and he was still before her, not moving, even though she knew that he could shatter her grip in one move, and the question was whether she could shoot him before he did…

"Tseng-san?"

"Elena. If you please…"

"What are you doing here?"

A pause, and a low chuckle. "Once, Reno would have bet that you would have forgotten whatever mission orders you were executing and dropped your gun on your feet."

"That was four years ago, sir."

"And things change, apparently. Relax. I was attempting to locate all of you and destroy any classified data remaining on the database."

There was nothing to say to that, and her legs were getting weaker by the second. Once, she really would have dropped her gun on her feet, or sprung back, or embraced him, as unprofessional as that was, or at least to gush, or perhaps just gasp and stare in shock.

Instead she released him, holstered the pistol, stepped back, and clicked her heels together. "It's good to see you again, sir."

"At ease." He turned, and the faint light from the windows fell on that face that had haunted her dreams. Tired. Weary. _Smiling_. Untouched by age, except that his hair was longer, and …

…She couldn't help it. She smiled, through vision gone suddenly blurry, and her heart was in her throat.

_And at last we come to hope unlooked for…_

Hope and happiness and she was oh, oh so terrified that this was all a dream…

"Are any of the others alive?" Tseng asked.

"They survived the fall of Midgar, but I haven't been in touch with them since, sir."

"Elena, we passed the point of formality a long time ago. Shinra is no more, the Turks are gone…" he holstered the pistol that he had been carrying. "…call me Tseng."

And then it broke on her that _this was real_. Of course, _of course _it had to be a Turk –who else could have gotten all the way up here? Her legs, already wobbly, gave, and she stumbled backwards a step to lean against a deck, helpless laughter bubbling up within her. And Tseng's smile grew a little wider.

"It's good to see you well."

She gulped hastily for breath, half embarrassed at losing her composure like that. "How did you… we all thought you were dead."

"A lot of luck. My PHS was dead, but Reeve called for air lift to Mideel before his Cait Sith got destroyed. Things are rather confused after that – I ended up in the care of those at Mideel, when the Lifestream abruptly decided to well up there. Which effectively destroyed any means of transport back to the main land. And then I heard about Diamond Weapon …" he paused, shaking his head. "By the time I was in a position to get back to Junon and try and contact any of you, it was too late. No one knew where you were. And when Meteor hit, I thought it was all over."

"I'm so glad you're alive," she said, and it was a wonder he couldn't see the blush that was burning all the way through her cheeks. Four years and still the rookie. Four years and still that unrequited crush hadn't died… "But what do we do now?"

"We search. I've spent an inordinate amount of time searching for them here in Midgar. It's time to branch out. We're catching a flight to Junon."

"A flight?"

"There's a regular mail / cargo service that's been running between Midgar and Junon…" He'd started walking again, and she fell in step with him out of sheer habit. As if all the time in between hadn't existed and they were heading out again on a mission… she'd never thought that nostalgia would feel so good.

"Why were you searching so hard for us?"

"It wasn't just you I was searching for."

"Sir?"

He paused, just before the open corridor. "I'll tell you more another time. That is, if you want to come with me." And he glanced back. "Forgive me for assuming, but…"

"Of course." What else could she say? Wasn't this the very reason she had set out from Kalm for, this sense of sheer _belonging_ and _rightness_ that nothing else in the world could give her? "The Company may be gone, but a Turk is a Turk for life."

Tseng's eyes crinkled in a smile that was somehow sad. "Then let's go."

**To be continued**

* * *

I don't update the fics on my FFN account often enough. If you want the latest, pop over to my writing livejournal at hazelator dot livejournal dot com  
There are also fics that have _only_ been posted on the LJ (NC-17 fictions, original fictions, drafts, things I just haven't gotten round to posting here, etc.) 


	3. III: Phoenix in Flight

**III**: **Phoenix** **in flight**

A small city had sprung up beside Midgar, the embodiment of the ceaseless efforts of the World Restoration Organization. The inhabitants called it the Edge, although there were those who favored the name Neo Midgar.

It felt _exactly_ like they were preparing to depart on a mission, standing here on the helipad waiting for the next shuttle to come in. She had told herself: enough, be happy, stop wallowing in nostalgia, but it welled up again as the familiar beat of helicopter blades above them sounded.

Tseng glanced at her, and she couldn't help but smile back, and was rewarded with one of those terribly rare and unguarded smiles from her one-time superior. Superior. Turks were Turks for life, and Tseng would always be the boss to her.

"Remember," he said, and she grinned at that, seeing the same thoughts reflected in his eyes.

"Gongaga," they chorused together.

"Scarlet," she said.

"6 hour flight," he replied, and they shuddered in mock horror.

The deafening thunder of the helicopter coming in to land drowned out conversation after that, and the pilot hopped out, signaling them to board. _Ladies first_, Tseng indicated, to which she paused for a heartbeat, decided: _To hell with it_, and stuck her tongue out at him before clambering on board.

They glided into Junon on the wings of sunset, the sky a burnished gold that reminded her all too sharply of Meteor and the Weapons. Sunsets here had always been beautiful, viewed from the incredible floor to ceiling windows of the Junon Headquarters. But now that memory was punctuated with blood, the screams as soldiers were cut down, and all too starkly: Rufus, fists and teeth clenched, leaning against the glass, a strangled growl of sheer frustration rumbling low in his throat.

She had always been afraid of him; this boy President made of ivory and polished glass. Remote and untouchable, seemingly unflappable as he snapped out orders, the solid pillar of strength in the middle of the whirlwind of chaos. But as energy blasts plowed into their fortifications that day and defeat became inevitable, he had glanced up, and in one unguarded moment, turned to her, helplessness and gut wrenching guilt written on his features.

"_Sir," she had said, shocked to see her leader falter._

_What have I _done_, his eyes read, and it seemed as if he would break, more lost than she had ever seen him… than _anyone _had ever seen him, she suspected._

"_Sir," she had said again, training stepping in; Tseng's relentless drilling that they existed for the President, that they existed to take the fall for the President, that they were _Turks _and they were not allowed to falter, not even if the world ended… "What are your orders?"_

_And with nothing more extravagant than a shuddering breath and a blink of blue eyes, he had snapped back to himself, spinning to the communications panel and ordering the retreat. _

It had been the last time she had seen him. They said he had stared death in the eye without blinking, that he had died like a Turk or a SOLDIER, embracing the end without fear.

Tseng was watching her when she turned her attention from the view. She met his gaze – something _had_ changed, after all, in those years, if she look straight into his eyes without the overwhelming urge to look away. "Is something wrong?"

For a moment, it seemed as if he would speak, then he turned away, shaking his head.

"Tseng," she said, a shade reproachfully.

"I invited you to dinner once," he said, not looking at her. "May I apologize for my inability to attend on that occasion and extend another invitation?"

_He remembered._ Something that must have been sheer joy surged up in her, that this hadn't been a fluke, that it hadn't been a spur of the moment decision, that maybe, just _maybe_, he liked her enough that…

"Absolutely," she replied.

"Would madam be free this evening?" he asked, and now there was a sparkle in his eyes as he faced her once more.

"Why I do believe I shall be," she shot back, and it felt as if the world _clicked_ in that instant, as if both of them had crossed some unspoken, invisible line.

"Well then. We should try the Junon Imperial Hotel, if it's not burnt to the ground." Tseng made a mock grimace. "_Everything_ seems to have burned to the ground since I returned. Including my Midgar apartment."

-v-

The Junon Imperial, it turned out, was somewhat battered, but still standing, and the restaurant there was still as excellent and as pricey as ever. It was also, Elena thought to herself in the quietest corner of her mind, terribly romantic. Except that she didn't have anything formal but the Turk uniform she was presently standing in. Given that Tseng was also immaculately turned out in the same, it leant the air of a business meeting rather than a date.

Ah well. One took what opportunities one got.

Wine made the conversation flow – smoothly, lightly, touching first on speculation as to where the others could be, questions about each other's lives in the intervening years, reminiscing about the past, news of the present. Good topics. Safe topics.

Elena got tired of it very quickly, interesting though Tseng's stories were.

"Is it," she asked, not sure whether it was the wine making her bold, "Standard practice for the Director to invite his newest recruit out for dinner?"

Tseng was _never_ caught unawares by something as simple as conversation.

"No," he replied, mirror smooth.

She had made sure that she wasn't holding anything. It turned out to be a good thing as it felt as though her heart had stopped in her chest at that simple admission.

Clink of dinner cutlery as Tseng delicately placed his fork and knife together on an empty plate. Brush of fabric as he placed his elbows on the table, crossing his fingers and resting his chin atop them. Watching her.

"And then?" she prompted, feeling vaguely as though she was falling. Too far down the rabbit hole. One had no choice but to keep going.

Tseng smiled, removing his elbows from the table and adjusting the napkin on his lap. "You were never one for tact."

"Why bother to beat around the bush?" she mumbled.

"Indeed," Tseng replied.

"Especially around taciturn Wutainese," she retorted.

He laughed at that, a quiet chuckle that brought a blush to her face despite her best efforts to hide it. "I believe then, you know the answer."

"One is never certain until one gets it from the horse's mouth. Isn't that what you told us?"

"Indeed." Fingers smoothing the edge of the tablecloth. He inclined his head. "And I believe I also told you, and Reno especially, that haste is inadvisable."

"Tseng," she asked, trying not to let the disappointment that was trying to well up overwhelm her. "Can't you give me a straight answer for once?"

The smile faded from his face. "I am sorry.. It was …discourteous of me." He paused. "One is uncertain, you might say. We are not… who we used to be. And there are other matters I must resolve first."

"But…"

"I cannot give you anything. Not with the future so uncertain. Too many things are hanging in the balance."

"It doesn't matter," she whispered.

The honest sincerity in his face nearly broke her heart. "I care for you, Elena. More than a Director should care for one of his Turks, given that they are likely to die in the battle to come. But if all goes well, there may be no more battles. And maybe I could give you a better answer then."

There were a million things she wanted to ask him. Like how the future was uncertain. Like whether his 'maybe' was more of a 'yes maybe' or a 'no maybe'. But she knew it herself: here in Junon they were safe, for a little while, but outside, a hostile world still waited.

"I would give you more than just bitterness and a life in exile," he said.

"You're too much of a gentleman," she said. _But isn't that part of what I love about you? That someone like you should still exist in this world…_ "But you don't need to protect me, you know. I can look after myself. We could… we _will_ find the rest… and build something more than just a life in exile."

"That we will," he replied. "That we will."

-v-

The morning dawned clear and cold. Tseng, Elena discovered to her secret delight, wasn't impeccable in the mornings, not until he had two cups of coffee at least, and a splash of cold water to the face. Only then would he fish around for his tie, slightly muzzy, and fasten the shirt cuffs, and finger-comb his hair into some semblance of respect.

It would be different, she rather suspected, if an enemy had come through the window, or if his PHS had gone off – she had _seen_ him snap from completely asleep to completely awake in a heartbeat and put a bullet through the heart of a would be assassin from across the room in less than 2 seconds flat. But when off-duty, it seemed that even the Director could and did crash.

By the time they made their way out of the doors of the suite, though, he was every bit as professional as he normally appeared, on the PHS to order a cab to the airport as they strolled down the corridor together.

"We're late," he grumbled, as he snapped the PHS shut and shoved it into a jacket pocket. "Flight's in 15."

"Flight?" she asked. "I didn't know we were catching another flight?"

"Not ours," he replied, stifling a yawn. "But you'll see when we get there."

She glanced at him, puzzled, but he didn't offer any further explanation.

The airport was cold _and_ windy. Elena stuffed her hands into her suit pockets and firmly told her spine to stop shivering. It was undignified. It was un-Turklike. It was _weird,_ why they were standing here waiting for a flight that they weren't going to catch. She'd thought that someone would be on the flight, but the passengers from the helicopter – a family of six – had disembarked a while back and were unfamiliar to her.

"Tseng?" she asked.

"Late, as usual," Tseng murmured. "We really shouldn't have hurried."

"But there's no one…?"

With a roar, a helicopter zipped right overhead, came to a dead stop in midair, and then started flying backwards towards the helipad that it had overshot, before thumping down with a decided crunch.

"I… only one person flies like that," Elena gaped.

"I agree," Tseng said.

The door of the helicopter opened to eject the pilot, who paused only long enough to rip off the headset before turning… and stopping dead in his tracks. "Fuckin' Jenova," he said.

"Is that any way to greet your boss?" Tseng asked. "Reno?"

"Well, gee. Damn. I don't know," Reno said, still staring. "When your boss has been dead for like … _four years_, I don't think there's a standard protocol."

"Nevertheless."

"Well, and if it isn't the rookie too. How's things?"

Elena couldn't help it. "What… did you _do_ with your hair?"

-v-

Reno ran his fingers through jet black strands that would have looked reminiscent of Tseng's, except that all the gel in the world couldn't tame those spikes. The twin marks under his eyes were gone – plastic surgery, he said, couldn't afford to have them, too distinctive…

"You look Wutainese, you know, with those features and that pale complexion…" Elena said at last, as they hunched over their beers in the bar along Junon harbour. She felt uneasy about being here. Alone they might not have been too recognizable, but with all three of them in the same place… it kept feeling as though someone would put two and two together (or two and one, maybe), and then the whole place would be coming down around their ears.

Tseng, however, looked completely unfazed as he chuckled a little at her comment.

"The _eyes_, man," Reno shot back, jabbing a finger towards said eyes, which were still that shocking shade of green. She'd thought that he was from SOLDIER, the first time she had set eyes on him, and maybe it wasn't that far off. Maybe he really had had mako injections. She'd never asked.

"Do you know where Rude is?" Tseng queried, swirling his glass as if he were drinking wine instead of Junon Bitter.

"I don't know." Reno paused to light a cigarette, something he had never indulged in before, and fiddled with the pilot's goggles hanging around his neck. "We were all split up after Meteor hit Midgar… He's probably dead. I've been flying over half the planet and I haven't seen sight or sound of him…"

"You didn't see sight or sound of us either," Elena felt compelled to point out.

"Well, you—" distinctive Reno finger jab at Tseng, "were dead, so you don't count. And you—" distinctive Reno finger jab at her, "were holed up in a backwater."

"So?" she shot back.

Ever dramatic, Reno slapped his palm against his forehead and mumbled: "Rookies."

Elena took a drink and grinned. Her very own crazy family, reunited again. Much as Reno drove her to distraction with his stupid antics and the whole rookie thing, it was so good to have him around again. _And not just you and Tseng and might bes and might-have-beens_, a voice whispered in the back of her mind. She shushed it into silence.

"We can't possibly search the entire globe looking for him," Reno was telling Tseng. "He might be dead. He's definitely hiding. He's not going to turn up so easily. Hell, I don't even know how you found me."

"Intelligence gathering is my specialty," Tseng said dryly.

"You don't know until you don't try," Elena added.

"I hate to sound callous… but… what're you planning on doing? A big family reunion?" Reno's tone inched into the sarcastic drawl she remembered so well. "We're not Sephiroth clones. Besides, we're not exactly welcomed around here. Individually, we may have been able to escape notice, except for Mr Wutai over there – your fault for looking so pretty for the cameras. But in a group… we're too damn obvious."

Oh, now _that_ irked her. Turks didn't give up, no matter what the odds were. They'd certainly drilled _that_ into her, over and over again. And perhaps if she'd been alone, if she'd never found the rest, why that would be a different story. But here there were three of them together again, against all possible odds, and if that wasn't a sign… a sign of _something_… and he was just _writing it off_, telling them to go back to whatever miserable lives they'd been leading before that…

And in that instant, everything that had been nagging her from Kalm to here became crystal clear. There was no going back. There was no hiding any more. That kind of life… wasn't a life worth living. "We're going to rebuild Shinra Company," she found herself saying, mind filled with images of yesteryear. It wasn't just about the Company. It was about a time when the Turks had once been a force worth reckoning with. It was about a time when they had been the ones standing between the world and a disaster. A time when they'd had a mission, and a goal, and something to work towards. Her sister had been part of that team. Her sister had died being part of that team. She could do nothing less. 1

Reno snorted. "Dream on, rookie."

"We're Turks!" Elena hissed at him. "We can do anything if we put our minds to it! We can't be just…just… normal. _Mediocre._ Doesn't it bug you?"

It was almost gratifying to see Reno look away, unable to meet her eyes. "Look," he said, after a pause. "I'd like to have the good ol' days back as much as you do, but _we're not businessmen._ You need people who're good at that shit. Executives. You need Shinras. Hell, seeing how damn senile the old President was getting towards the end, probably only Junior had an icicle in Hell's chance of even putting the company back together again. Only problem is that they're all busy chillin' in the Lifestream now."

"Oh look at you!" Elena snapped. "Just scraping by, hoping that someone doesn't recognize you, just making enough to get yourself smashed the next Friday…"

"You got any better plans, Rookie!" Reno snarled, banging his glass down on the table and drawing stares. They glared at each other, both almost too furious to speak, and the other people at the bar quietly found other things to look at.

"Suit yourself," Elena said at last, disgustedly, and turned her attention on her beer.

"What about you, boss?" Reno said, turning to the silent Tseng. "Surely you're not just in it for the _thrills_."

"I'm just following orders," Tseng said mildly.

"Orders?" Elena and Reno chorused, and Tseng shot them both a bemused glance.

"That night, when I was in the Shinra building… I was also searching for something."

"Impossible!" Elena said. "The place was cleaned out… I made sure that even the data was destroyed or encrypted."

Tseng smiled at her. "You don't have access to everything. There are sections of the Shinra internal network that aren't housed in the central data center. For most intents and purposes, they don't exist. They're completely off the main network."

"So did you find, man?" Reno asked. "What were you looking for? The lost Shinra fortunes?"

"Rufus' final orders."

"What?"

Tseng took his time answering as he fiddled with his glass. "In the last moments before Weapon struck the office, he encoded a set of orders, directed to Rude, and through Rude, to the rest of you."

The shock that rippled through her at those words were like lightning to the nerves. She found that she'd moved, unthinkingly, to the edge of her seat, leaning forward across the table. Orders? Some plan? Some kind of… they had to be authentic. Tseng would never have followed them otherwise.

"And what were the Chief's famous last words?" Reno asked.

"He ordered us to Wutai," Tseng said.

"_Wutai_?" Reno demanded, and Elena could feel her eyes widening.

"That means, if Rude's still alive, he would have headed for Wutai…" she postulated.

"Why _Wutai_?" Reno persisted. "Of all the forsaken places on this ruddy planet…"

Tseng met their incredulous stares evenly. "He didn't say. I can postulate… there were old supply caches and abandoned outposts in Wutai from after the Shinra-Wutai war. There may have been something left there."

"Dude." Reno ground his cigarette out in the ashtray. "That's so stupid."

If Tseng was fazed by the remark, he didn't show it. "Nevertheless," he said calmly. "Are you with us?"

There was a brief silence, and Elena found herself watching Reno like a hawk. Read the body language, they had taught her in basic training, and here she could almost see the internal struggle. The fidgeting, the refusal to meet Tseng's eyes, the way he worried at the hem of his pilot's jacket…

_He's not going to do it_, she thought suddenly, and the disappointment that followed that was almost painful. _He's given up. He's… oh _senpai…

Reno's eyes met hers at that moment. And narrowed. He spun back to Tseng. "You know I can't resist when you ask me like that. _Fine._ I'll schedule myself on the next flight to Rocket Town and bring you guys there, and we'll see how that goes, right? No one flies straight into Wutai now. After Meteor fell, they had this whole resurgence of anti-Shinra, anti-evil foreign aliens sentiment and closed themselves off…"

"Rocket Town will be fine," Tseng said, as Elena blinked and wondered if perhaps Reno had seen something of her thoughts in her gaze.

"But no one gets into Wutai!" Reno protested.

"I _am_ from Wutai," Tseng pointed out.

"And you _look_ like you're from Wutai," Elena couldn't resist pointing out, indicating Reno's hair.

"Whatever, man," Reno pulled his legs off the neighbouring stool, and adjusted his jacket as he stood. "You guys are on crack. But who knows. You might just find something."

Elena exchanged glances with Tseng as they stood, adjusting ties and jackets. He was smiling.

-v-

**To be continued.**

1 Elena refers to the events of Before Crisis. This fic is an alternate universe and hence does not follow the BC-canon, and is designed to be spoiler-free hence the lack of elaboration.


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